Andy Hopper

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British computer scientist (born 1953)

title: "Andy Hopper" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1953-births", "living-people", "members-of-the-university-of-cambridge-computer-laboratory", "british-computer-scientists", "british-technology-company-founders", "acorn-computers", "alumni-of-swansea-university", "fellows-of-corpus-christi-college,-cambridge", "fellows-of-the-royal-society", "fellows-of-the-royal-academy-of-engineering", "commanders-of-the-order-of-the-british-empire", "fellows-of-the-institution-of-engineering-and-technology", "polish-emigrants-to-the-united-kingdom", "businesspeople-from-warsaw", "british-businesspeople", "alumni-of-trinity-hall,-cambridge", "people-from-little-shelford", "knights-bachelor"] description: "British computer scientist (born 1953)" topic_path: "engineering" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hopper" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary British computer scientist (born 1953) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

FieldValue
imageAndy Hopper.jpg
image_size250px
honorific-prefixProfessor
honorific_suffix
nameSir Andy Hopper
birth_nameAndrew Hopper
birth_date
birth_placeWarsaw, Poland
nationalityBritish
fieldComputer Technology
work_institutions
alma_mater
doctoral_advisorDavid Wheeler
doctoral_studentsAndy Harter
thesis_year1978
thesis_titleLocal area computer communications networks
thesis_urlhttp://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.459643
known_for
prizes{{ubl
{{nowrapFellow of the Royal Society (2006)<ref name
CBE (2007)<ref namecbebbcAndy Hopper, IT innovator, awarded CBE
website
spouse
::

| image = Andy Hopper.jpg | image_size = 250px | honorific-prefix = Professor | honorific_suffix = | name = Sir Andy Hopper | birth_name = Andrew Hopper | birth_date = | birth_place = Warsaw, Poland | death_date = | death_place = | nationality = British | field = Computer Technology | work_institutions = | alma_mater = | doctoral_advisor = David Wheeler | doctoral_students = Andy Harter | thesis_year = 1978 | thesis_title = Local area computer communications networks | thesis_url = http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.459643 | known_for = | influences = | influenced = | prizes = {{ubl |Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (1989) |Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (1996) |Mountbatten Medal (2004) |Fellow of the Royal Society (2006) |CBE (2007) |MacRobert Award (2013) |Bakerian Medal (2017) }} | footnotes = | website = | spouse = Sir Andrew Hopper (born 9 May 1953) is a British-Polish computer technologist and entrepreneur. He is Chairman of lowRISC CIC, a Commissioner of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, former Treasurer and Vice-President of the Royal Society, Professor Emeritus of Computer Technology at the University of Cambridge, an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Education

Hopper was educated at Quintin Kynaston School in London after which he went to study for a Bachelor of Science degree at Swansea University before going to the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1974 for postgraduate work. Hopper was awarded his PhD in 1978 for research into local area computer communications networks supervised by David Wheeler.

Research and career

Hopper's PhD, completed in 1977 was in the field of communications networks, and he worked with Maurice Wilkes on the creation of the Cambridge Ring and its successors.

Hopper's interests include computer networks, multimedia systems, Virtual Network Computing, sentient computing and ubiquitous data. His most cited paper describes the indoor location system called the Active Badge. He has contributed to a discussion of the privacy challenges relating to surveillance. He is a proponent of Digital Commons industrial and societal infrastructure.

After more than 20 years at Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, Hopper was elected Chair of Communications Engineering at Cambridge University Engineering Department in 1997. He returned to the Computer Laboratory as Professor of Computer Technology and Head of Department in 2004.

Hopper's research under the title Computing for the Future of the Planet examines the uses of computers, data and AI for assuring the sustainability of the planet.

Hopper has supervised approximately fifty PhD students. An annual PhD studentship has been named after him.

Commercial activities

In 1978, Hopper co-founded Orbis Ltd to develop networking technologies. He worked with Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, founders of Acorn Computers Ltd. Orbis became a division of Acorn in 1979 and continued to work with the Cambridge Ring. While at Acorn, Hopper contributed to design some of the chips for the BBC Micro and helped conceive the project which led to the design of the ARM microprocessor. When Acorn was acquired by Olivetti in 1985, Hauser became vice-president for research at Olivetti, in which role he co-founded the Olivetti Research Laboratory in 1986 with Hopper; Hopper became its managing director.

In 1985, after leaving Acorn, Hopper co-founded Qudos, a company producing CAD software and doing chip prototyping. He remained a director until 1989.

In 1993, Hopper set up Advanced Telecommunication Modules Ltd with Hermann Hauser. This company went public on the NASDAQ as Virata in 1999. The company was acquired by Conexant Systems on 1 March 2004.

In 1995, Hopper co-founded Telemedia Systems, now called IPV, and was its chairman until 2003.

In 1997, Hopper co-founded Adaptive Broadband Ltd (ABL) to further develop the 'Wireless ATM' project started at ORL in the early 90s. ABL was bought by California Microwave, Inc in 1998.

In January 2000, Hopper co-founded Cambridge Broadband which was to develop broadband fixed wireless equipment; he was non-executive chairman from 2000 – 2005.

In 2002 Hopper was involved in the founding of Ubisense Ltd to further develop the location technologies and sentient computing concepts that grew out of the ORL Active Badge system. Hopper became a director in 2003 and was chairman between 2006 and 2015 during which the company made its initial public offering (IPO) in June 2011.

In 2002, Hopper co-founded RealVNC and served as chairman until the company was sold in 2021.

In 2002, Hopper co-founded Level 5 Networks and was a director until 2008, just after it merged with Solarflare.

From 2005 until 2009, Hopper was chairman of Adventiq, a joint venture between Adder and RealVNC, developing a VNC-based system-on-a-chip.

In 2013 Hopper co-founded TxtEz, a company looking to commoditise B2C communication in Africa.

Since 2019 he has been Chairman of lowRISC Community Interest Company which develops industrial-strength open source hardware.

Hopper was an advisor to Hauser's venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners from 2001 until 2005. He was also an advisor to the Cambridge Gateway Fund from 2001 until 2006.

Awards and honours

Hopper is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) and was a Trustee from 2003 until 2006, and again between 2009 and 2013. In 2004, Hopper was awarded the Mountbatten Medal of the IET (then IEE). He served as president of the IET between 2012 and 2013.

Hopper was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1996 and awarded their silver medal in 2003. He was a member of the Council of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2007 to 2010. In 2013, he was part of the RealVNC team to receive the MacRobert Award.

In 1999, Hopper gave the Royal Society's Clifford Paterson Lecture on Progress and research in the communications industry published under the title Sentinent Computing and was thus awarded the society's bronze medal for achievement. In May 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was a member of the Council of the Royal Society between 2009 and 2011. In 2017, Hopper become treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society and was awarded the Bakerian Lecture and Prize.

In the 2007 New Year Honours, Hopper was made an CBE for services to the computer industry.

In 2004, Hopper was awarded the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award and in 2016 the Test-of-Time Award for the Active Badge paper.

In July 2005, Hopper was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of Swansea University.

In 2010 Hopper was awarded an Honorary Degree from Queen's University Belfast.

In 2011 Hopper was elected as member of the Council and Trustee of the University of Cambridge and a member of the Finance Committee.

Hopper serves on several academic advisory boards. In 2005, he was appointed to the advisory board of the Institute of Electronics Communications and Information Technology at Queen's University Belfast. In 2008 he joined the advisory board of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. In 2011 he was appointed a member of the advisory board of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Since 2018 he has been a Commissioner of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.

He was knighted in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to computer technology.

Personal life

Hopper married Alison Gail Smith, Professor of Plant Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, in 1988. They have two children, William and Merrill. He is a qualified pilot with over 6,000 hours logged, including a round the world flight, and his house near Cambridge has an airstrip from which he flies his six-seater Cessna light aircraft.

References

References

  1. (2024). "HOPPER, Sir Andrew".
  2. {{MathGenealogy
  3. Harter, Andrew Charles. (1990). "Three-dimensional integrated circuit layout". [[Cambridge University Press]].
  4. Anon. (2006). "Professor Andrew Hopper CBE FREng FRS }} One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: {{blockquote". [[Royal Society]].
  5. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/6217283.stm Andy Hopper, IT innovator, awarded CBE]
  6. {{DBLP
  7. {{AcademicSearch. 610827 {{dead link. (December 2016)
  8. [https://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1121912 Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 22 May 2008 (video)]
  9. Hopper, Andy. (1978). "Local Area Computer Communication Networks". University of Cambridge.
  10. "Andy Hopper".
  11. (1990). "Pandora - an experimental system for multimedia applications". ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review.
  12. (1998). "Virtual network computing". IEEE Internet Computing.
  13. (2000). "The Clifford Paterson Lecture, 1999. Sentient computing". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.
  14. (1992). "The active badge location system". ACM Transactions on Information Systems.
  15. (March 2007). "Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance". [[Royal Academy of Engineering]].
  16. "Bio".
  17. (23 April 2009). "The Tech Lab: Andy Hopper". [[BBC]].
  18. Gardner, Rachel. (2023-10-18). "Announcing the Hopper Studentship".
  19. (June 2010). "Oral history of British science". [[British Library]].
  20. (May 2008). "An interview with Andy Hopper". Alan McFarlane.
  21. (Apr 2012). "It started like this...he Growth of Enterprise Networks and Entrepreneurial Eco Systems in Cambridge and around the World". Alan Barrell.
  22. (22 June 2011). "Ubisense IPO ends five and a half-year wait". Cambridge Business Media.
  23. "XILINX TECHNOLOGY LTD Company Information". [[Companies House]].
  24. "TXTEZ LIMITED Company Information". [[Companies House]].
  25. "lowRISC: Collaborative open silicon engineering".
  26. (January 2009). "The people who make it happen (part 1)". [[Engineering_%26_Technology]].
  27. (13 September 2006). "Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Trustees". Institution of Engineering and Technology.
  28. (10 November 2004). "Prestigious Mountbatten Medal Awarded To Professor Andy Hopper". Institution of Engineering and Technology.
  29. "The IET Welcomes its new President".
  30. (Autumn 2007). "Council News". Royal Academy of Engineering.
  31. (July 2013). "Software company RealVNC wins UK's premier engineering prize". Royal Academy of Engineering.
  32. (2017-08-22). "Professor Andy Hopper named new Royal Society Treasurer".
  33. (2017-11-28). "Bakerian Medal and Lecture".
  34. (30 December 2006). "UK home computer pioneer honoured". BBC News.
  35. "Outstanding Contribution Award". [[SIGMOBILE]].
  36. "Test-of-Time Paper Award".
  37. "Queen's University Belfast – 07-2010 Press Releases". Queen's University Belfast.
  38. Anon. (December 2011). "none". [[Cambridge University Reporter]].
  39. (2 November 2006). "Times Higher Education – On the move...". [[The Times]].
  40. "IC Advisory Board". [[École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne]].
  41. {{London Gazette. (12 June 2021)
  42. "Hopper, Andy (Part 1 of 7). An Oral History of British Science". [[British Library]].

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